


Overheard in the Unknown

by kimpernickel



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimpernickel/pseuds/kimpernickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What she first mistakes for memories turn out to be much, much more. Whether they are good or bad depends on what's being said. (A longer version to the previously written "Eavesdropping.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overheard in the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whiggity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiggity/gifts).



> So after Whiggity sent a lovely comment on the previously written "Eavesdropping," I was inspired to write a longer version of that fic. There is no need to read that one before this.

_Don’t do that, Greg._

A sharpness pricks at the pad of Beatrice’s index finger. “Ow!” The sampler she is— _was_ —working on drops into her lap, the needle losing its red thread as it clangs to the floorboards with a _ting_. She sticks the finger in her mouth in case of any bleeding. She tastes none, but her finger still throbs from the pain. How a little needle causes such pain is beyond her.

“You’re so clumsy, Bea,” chides her sister Georgia, the second oldest girl in the family, only eleven months younger than Beatrice. She picks up Beatrice’s needle and threads the red back into its eye. “You mustn’t stab through the holes. You have to gently _guide_ it.”

Before Georgia can demonstrate, Beatrice snatches the hoop away from her. “I was distracted.”

Georgia clicks her tongue with a _tsk-tsk_. “You should never distract yourself from cross-stitching.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Beatrice gripes, and she tosses the hoop to the mouth of the fireplace. It’s a low, half-hearted toss, but Georgia leaps to catch it, as if it were about to fall into the flames and burn to a crisp. “Cross-stitching is boring, I can’t help to get distracted. It hurts my eyes. And my fingers.” Beatrice looks at her finger once more. No blood, but she swears she sees a small puncture, and the pad is a little numb.

“Look at that rose!” Georgia scolds, brandishing the unfinished sampler. “You skipped some of the stitches. You’ll have to take them out and start from the beginning.”

“Fat chance,” Beatrice rebuffs. “I’m going to play with Violet and Matthew. _They_ know how to have fun.” She stands up and leaves Georgia at the fireplace. She ignores Georgia’s usual scoff-and-groan, just like she ignores his voice and the memory it conjured up.

* * *

Three days after the insignificant event, Beatrice wakes up to the early sunlight dancing on her eyelids. She turns over on her side with a grunt and hopes her mother won’t barge into her room and insist she wake up for breakfast and begin her morning chores. She reaches that odd half-asleep stage, where she can hear noises around her (footsteps in the hallways and downstairs, her father telling Richard, the eldest boy, to put on his gloves), but she’s not too responsive to them, and time passes faster than normal.

_Hurry up, Greg!_

Beatrice jerks awake, her eyes wide. The extra minutes of quasi-sleep don’t go to waste; she feels refreshed. But those extra minutes of revitalization don’t shake off the uneasiness that washes over her. She lingers in bed for another minute or two, thinking she can fall back into that comatose, but her eyes remain open. She throws the sheets off of her, swings her legs over the edge of the bed, and dresses herself for the day. Beatrice almost picks the light blue dress, but pulls her hand away right as she touches the fabric, and opts for a mousy brown one instead. She brushes her hair, ties it up, and skips out of her room down to the dining room, where everyone, except Richard and her father, are assembled.

“Beatrice!” her mother exclaims right as she exits the kitchen to see Beatrice plop her bum into the seat of an unoccupied chair. “What’s got you up without me shaking you awake?”

Beatrice reaches for one of the drop biscuits in the bowl at the center of the table. “I remembered something.” It’s not a lie.

* * *

She doesn’t know why, but she’s been thinking about Wirt _a lot_ lately.

Wirt _and_ Greg, but for some reason, the only memories that pop up in her mind feature Wirt’s voice. They parted ways a month ago—what feels like a month, at least, for the snow still falls and collects on the ground. Beatrice stopped gazing out of the window within the first week since breaking her and her family’s curse because it grew tedious, and her parents needed her to complete her chores. Wirt and Greg drifted in and out of her thoughts in that period, but mostly in the inquisitive manner.

Ever since the time with Georgia in the fireplace, though, the memories are different. It’s not as if it’s Beatrice’s voice in her mind, reciting various sentences Wirt said over the course of their unlikely journey together. It’s _his_ voice, indistinguishable and clear, almost like he is nearby and speaking to her, but she can’t see him.

_Wait, that’s dumb._ The third time, while Beatrice plays a game of chess with Howard. It causes her to rethink her strategy, and she wins her first round against Howard for the first time since the scissors snipped away the wings. Though Beatrice remembers that blackened and fateful day as though it happened just seconds before, she pretends Wirt sits alongside her, directing her in which moves to make. Maybe, wherever he is, Wirt plays chess, too—and he teaches it to Greg. It wouldn’t be unlike him.

_Oh, of course. I love poetry_. The fourth time, as Beatrice helps her mother prepare dinner one afternoon. That memory is hazier, but that sounds like something Wirt once told her. Maybe in the secret hallways connecting Quincy Endicott and Margueritte Grey’s big fancy houses?

* * *

_Did you know Canada and America fought a minor war over who would control Maine?_

“No,” Beatrice mutters under her breath. She’s never heard of Canada. Or America. Or Maine. She’s never heard Wirt say _that_ until just now. She would remember such a goofy and nonsensical fact like that. Wirt said some odd things when she knew him, but not anything about a war.

“What was that, dear?”

Beatrice snaps out of her trance. Her father stares at her with a raised eyebrow over the dining table. The other seven siblings eat their dinner without a care for the scene that could play out in front of them. Her mother darts her eyes from Beatrice to the patriarch of the family.

“Uh, nothing,” she lies, and she shoves a forkful of pot roast into her mouth. She avoids her father’s stare, but he turns away after a prolonged second or two so he can finish his own pot roast and discuss how Richard should become a carpenter’s apprentice.

This is the seventh time in two weeks she has listened to Wirt’s voice. And it isn’t a memory.

* * *

_Rollercoasters make me queasy._

Not once has Beatrice ever heard of a rollercoaster.

Two days after the seventh memory-that-is-not-a-memory, Beatrice reads a book in the candlelight before she goes to sleep. She slams the book shut and loses her place because Wirt’s voice startles her so much, she forgets to use the attached ribbon as a bookmark. Beatrice snaps her neck up, the realization pulsating through her veins and swelling her heart.

They are not memories.

They are Wirt, _now,_ back at wherever he came from.

A smile curls on Beatrice’s lips. She places the book on her bedside table, blows out the candle, and slides down into her bed so she can fall asleep. She keeps smiling, and relishes in the knowledge that she can hear Wirt, and that he and Greg are alive and well.

* * *

Beatrice takes figurative notes of how these snippets into Wirt’s life occur. At first, she expects they follow a pattern. A few days in between each vignette. But drawing from the first ten and the subsequent ten, Beatrice recognizes that these flashes fluctuate at random, no constant pattern to them. In between the tenth and eleventh, it’s two days. The eleventh to the twelfth, six hours. The twelfth to the thirteenth, one week. The fourteenth through the seventeenth all occurred in the same day. They are unpredictable, occurring when and wherever. This upsets her for a moment; she’ll never know the next time he speaks because it could be in one hour or one week, maybe shorter, maybe longer.

Except, Beatrice comes to appreciate it as this way. She would rather be kept on her toes for these pleasant surprises than spend the rest of her life ticking down the time until she can hear Wirt say his nerdy and weird sentences again.

* * *

Beatrice also takes this time to experiment with this unconventional mind link.

She plays with her youngest siblings one snowy afternoon. She chases them as they pelt small snowballs at her. Violet giggles once Beatrice scoops her up. “Rawr! I’ve caught you now!”

“Lemme go!” Violet wriggles from Beatrice’s arm. They tumble to the ground, and it turns into a tickle fight. Matthew climbs onto Beatrice’s back and attempts to pull her away, and it devolves into more tickling and more squeals. Beatrice herself laughs as her siblings manage to tickle her in return, and she rolls onto the snow.

_Oh, hi Dad._

It doesn’t register that Wirt has spoken until a beat later. Beatrice flies her arms out to subdue Violet and Matthew. “Wirt? It’s me, Beatrice! I can hear you. Can you hear me?” she pants through the cry, looking up to the gray clouds above.

“Bea?” It’s Matthew, not Wirt. “Bea, what’s wrong?”

She ignores him and calls out again, “Wirt?”

This time, it is Violet who responds. “Who’s Wirt?”

Beatrice closes her eyes and clears her mind. Matthew and Violet stay quiet; somehow, they know this is important to their oldest sister. Snowflakes kiss her cheeks, nose, and ears, sprinkling themselves in her hair and on the shoulders of her winter shawl. She sighs and opens her eyes after the longest minute in her life.  

“Let’s go inside.” She stands up and leads her brother and sister into the house. They don’t protest.

* * *

Beatrice doesn’t give up. She promises herself to try once more the next time she hears Wirt.

Two days after the first attempt, she brushes and ties her hair as she prepares herself for the upcoming day’s chores.

_What cake flavor would an eight-year-old boy prefer? Chocolate or lemon_?

She doesn’t waste her time.

“Chocolate, you goofball! Can you hear me like I can hear you?”

Beatrice stares at her reflection in the mirror. She still holds her hands up to her hair, ribbon and hair intertwined in her fingers, but they stall as she speaks aloud to no one. Her pulse quickens, almost deepens, in anticipation for Wirt’s answer. _C’mon, loser. Anything. Say_ anything _so I know you can hear me, too._

Wirt’s reply doesn’t come for another two days. She finds herself at the windowsill, her arms encircled over her legs, absently watching the snow melt in the dusk. Tucker, the family dog, lies beside her, head resting against his crossed paws.

_If the blue of the sky does not mock me enough, it is the crimson of the crepuscule that taunts me again._

_Shut up_ , Beatrice snaps. Even if Wirt can’t hear her, it’s almost like he’s still around.

Before she goes to sleep that night, she scribbles the line of Wirt’s poetry onto a scrap piece of paper.

* * *

“Would you like to join us on our trip into town today, Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks up from her oatmeal and rests her eyes on her mother. She blinks.

“Your sisters and I are going to the general store to pick up some items we are running low on. With tomorrow being Sunday and all, I don’t have all the ingredients I need for tomorrow’s dinner.”

She likes going into town, but not when it means a stuffy errand trip with her mother and her sisters. Georgia doesn’t go out of duty; she goes to be seen, and to flirt with the general store’s dumbstruck shop boy, who is older than Beatrice by at least two years. Beatrice is about to respond with a loud “no,” but she stops herself before she even opens her mouth. She bites her lip and nods.

In town, Beatrice sneaks away from her mother and her three sisters once they enter the general store. She scurries to the bookseller, who also sells a selection of stationery. She almost never goes into this store; she once considered books stuffy and boring, but lately, she’s taken a liking to them. The moment she pushes open the door and the bell rings at her presence, Beatrice reaches down to pull out a few of the coins she tucked in the hem of her dress before she left the house.

The vendor, a portly and balding man with warm, dark brown skin, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hello there, miss. How can I help you today?”

“Do you have any journals—the kind to write in?”

He nods at her. “I believe I have a few writing journals.” He walks over to a corner of the store and picks a few of the bound books off of the shelf. He stacks the books on one top of the other and returns to the counter, where Beatrice stands. “Are you looking to keep a diary, or write verse and prose?”

“Neither,” she admits. “I’m going to keep a log.”

The vendor spreads the journals across the counter so she can see the covers. Most are plain leather-bound pages, small enough for Beatrice to hide away in the waist of her drawers. One is larger, with gold-rimmed pages. The cover has an embroidered pattern—a navy blue background with burnt orange leaves scattered over the plane.

“A log of what?”

“Thoughts,” Beatrice answers. She points to the ornate journal. “This one. How much for this one?”

“Three gold coins.”

He’s underpricing it for her; Beatrice can tell by the way he smiles and the knowing glance he gives her. This journal deserves at least _five_ gold coins, and she has six to spare. Before she hands over her payment, she harkens back to her chicken scratch on a loose paper flying about her room. “What about poetry anthologies?”

“Yes, I have those, too. Is there a poet you’re looking for in particular?”

Beatrice shakes her head. The vendor moves to another corner of the store. “What kind of poetry do you like to read?” he asks as he surveys the plethora of book spines.

“I don’t know. I haven’t read much poetry before.”

“Then you won’t mind if I make a recommendation?”

“Not at all.” Beatrice loiters at the counter for another minute or two before he returns with one book in his hand. “This is a good introduction into poetry, I think. Not too heady, and a familiar subject.”

Beatrice takes the book from him and read the spine. _Verse and Rhyme of the Unknown, Volume One_. “How much is this with the journal?”

“Five gold coins.”

Beatrice hesitates, but she’s not about to haggle such a fortunate bargain—especially not when she’s disappeared long enough for her mother and sisters to notice. She hands him five gold coins and clutches the books to her chest. “Thank you!” she calls from over her shoulder as she scuttles out the door. Later, after a scolding from her mother and an hour’s journey home, Beatrice heads up to her room to transcribe, as legibly as she can, her previous scrawling into the journal—the inaugurational entry.

_One. If the blue of the sky does not mock me enough, it is the crimson of the crepuscule that taunts me again._

* * *

 

“Looks like we have a burgeoning novelist in our family!” her father comments one afternoon. Beatrice sits at the windowsill again, reading the first entry over and over again. She keeps a pen in her hand just in case.

“You carry that thing around with you everywhere you go. Isn’t it cumbersome?”

Beatrice groans. She has to keep it near her, just in case Wirt says something profound enough warrant being written down. Nearly two weeks after she purchased it and the anthology, Wirt says some things, but nothing notable. It’s nice to hear _Would you pass the butter, please?_ and _School was fine_ because it means Wirt is doing alright, but it doesn’t compare to the poetic recitation Beatrice has written down.  Nevertheless, it _is_ cumbersome to lug around her journal and pen in her hands. Especially when she goes to the mill or barn to conduct her chores for the day, where the journal sits out in the open, vulnerable to the musty elements and her dirtied hands. But she doesn’t want to give her father the satisfaction, so she shakes her head.

“Do you want one of my old satchels? It’s clean, I promise.”

Beatrice furls her brow, and nods.

* * *

It’s another five days before she hears _it._

After finishing her chores for the day, Beatrice grabs _Verse and Rhyme_ from her room and plops into the armchair next to the fireplace, her legs draped over one of the arms and her back to the other. She reads one of the lengthier poems about summer time (if only; springtime pokes from underneath the remnants of winter with buds on trees and prolonged daylight, but the cold still hangs about the atmosphere). That’s when she hears _it._

_I think Beatrice would like this book._

_Verse and Rhyme_ spills out of her hands and onto the floor as she reaches for the satchel she placed at one of the chair’s legs. Once she has a hold of her journal and pen, she opens the cover and writes the second entry. _Two. I think Beatrice would like this book_. For added measure, she doodles a star to the left of the _Two_. It’s the first time Wirt has ever said her name and she hears it— _of course_ it deserves a place in her journal. When the ink of her fountain pen dries on the paper, Beatrice swipes her finger across the new record. A twist in her chest spreads a surge of heat into her abdomen.

If only she and Wirt could converse. She would ask him what book it is, and then go to the book vendor and see if he has a copy available. Beatrice would mention _Verse and Rhyme_ and how he would like it, and before long, they would be sharing updates in their respective lives, including Greg’s. The conversation, complete with teases at each other’s expense, would make so many twists and turns that by the end, they’re talking about trivial matters, like what a baby’s dream would entail.

But Beatrice cannot have a discussion with Wirt, not in the way she wants, so she accepts what is given to her. She closes her journal, slides it back into her father’s satchel along with the pen. With a weighty exhale, she picks up _Verse and Rhyme_ , and thumbs for the summer time poem.

* * *

The days warm up and the nights shorten, and their positions reverse to cooler days and longer nights. Beatrice finishes volume one of _Verse and Rhyme_ , its corners worn and the pages scribbled with her own notes. She purchases volumes two and three from the book vendor, and keeps one of them with her in her father’s satchel at all times. On scrap sheets of paper, she writes her own poetic verses. None are as beautiful and lyrical as those in her tomes, and she throws most of the attempts away.

Wirt’s voice oscillates as usual. The entries in Beatrice’s journal add up, filling line after line, page after page. Through her log, and the many other sentences not worth writing down, she pieces together the scraps she has of his life.

_Entry 7. You’re a good brother_. He speaks to Greg. They get along better now.

One late autumn afternoon after she finishes her chores: _I got my report card today. All A’s._ Not the most fascinating sentence, but he does well in school, and only further evidence of how much of a nerd he is.

_Entry 16._ _An endless path before me, I march into the inevitability that is uncertainty._ More poetry. What a loser. Although, maybe it speaks for a greater shift?

A frost-bitten winter, with perpetual gray clouds in the sky: _My pants are too short._ Perhaps he’s grown taller, but she can’t picture a taller Wirt. To her, Wirt is the baby-faced boy who wears a blue cape and a red cone hat, at least two inches shorter than her human self.

_Entry 27. I never thought I’d ever have a girlfriend_. Such a sentence reflects Beatrice’s own opinions on Wirt’s romantic life, as well. She assumes his beloved is Sara, the girl of whom he spoke during his time here. She’s happy for him. Really.

Another spring day, with budding flowers, fresh grass, and newborn calves. _I finally passed my driver’s test!_ A driver? Of what?

_Entry 52. My poetry assignment was selected for publication!_ He must be at university now, and success is already following him.

A late summer evening, she reads a poem from _Verse and Rhyme_. _I haven’t even thought of what  want to do after graduation._

_Entry 83. I saw a bluebird today. For a moment, I thought it was Beatrice._ She smiles and wishes it was her, too.

* * *

It might be Wirt’s birthday.

Beatrice hides from her responsibilities, her siblings, and the late spring sun. At the edge of the trees that meet her family’s property, she sprawls herself in the grass with a canteen of water and the satchel flanking her sides. She reads volume four of _Verse and Rhyme_ , and breathes in the woodland scent, peppered with honeysuckles and her mother’s roses.

_Just because I’m twenty-one now doesn’t mean I’m going to buy alcohol_ for _you._

Beatrice closes the tome of poetry. It’s not a profound statement on the surface. Not one worth writing down.

Wirt, twenty-one?

Buts she’s still sixteen, just as her youngest brother is still four! Wirt can’t possibly be _twenty-one_. She’s older than him! Her seventeenth birthday is arriving shortly, and—

The seasons pass, and no day is ever the same as those preceding, and she frolics with her siblings, and her parents chides her about finding a suitor appropriate for marriage—but she is still sixteen. Why is Wirt twenty-one, but Beatrice is still as old as when she threw rocks at the bluebird? She has several memories from her early childhood, like the soft yellow blanket she slept with, and her dog as a bouncy puppy, and when her other seven siblings were born, and yet life…stopped after sixteen. Her seventeenth birthday looms in the air, with promises of what she could expect for presents, but it never gets closer.

How has she only noticed it _now_?

She writes down the sentence; her journal’s one hundredth seventy-fifth entry.

* * *

 

_My schedule is nine to one on Saturdays_. He works for a living.

_I have to pay the electric bill by Friday._ What is electricity?

The journal entries grow and grow to the point Beatrice needs another journal. The second book lacks any design or intricacy on the cover, and the first entry she pens on its pages is the three hundredth sixty-first entry in total.

_Greg, I think I’m going to marry her, and if I do, then I want you to be my best man._

Beatrice smiles, and it sours. A few days move along steadily until she hears him once more, right as prepares herself for bed.

_Let go._

Beatrice settles herself into the sheets of her bed and sighs. Her heart hangs with an anchor in her stomach, and as she blows out the candle, the tears seep out of her eyes and fall onto her pillow.

“I can’t.”

* * *

“Hurry up, Violet!”

“But Bea! They have the lemon tarts!”

Beatrice grasps Violet’s little hand and tugs her away. “You know Mother wants us home soon, and she’d hate if I spoiled your appetite with a lemon tart.”

Violet pouts, but they walk away from the market and head to their home, just over twenty minutes’ walk. The summer sun blazes against their backs, and Beatrice sweats underneath her arms. They find solace in the trees and their shade, but they can’t escape the stuffiness of the humidity. Beatrice huffs. Summer was once her favorite season, but now she detests the heat and the mugginess and the sticky sweat.

Wirt’s been quiet lately. The last time she heard him, snow drifted from the skies, and her lips chapped from the dryness. _I haven’t been here in years_. Whatever that means.

And now, as they walk home, his voice echoes, soft and profound.

_I think of her all the time._

She fumbles for her _third_ journal, but the satchel hanging on her side only contains the fabric her mother ordered her to buy at the markets. Beatrice’s heart skips a beat, and the panic erupts. “Hurry!” she commands of Violet as they sprint to the house. Beatrice repeats the words in her head. _I think of her all the time, I think of her all the time, I think of her all the time, Ithinkofherallthetime Ithinkofherallthetime._

Beatrice released her hold on Violet once she arrives inside the house, and she clambers up the stairs and into her room. The journal sits atop her desk, and she fumbles to find a pen and scribble down the words. Even if it isn’t, Beatrice is convinced that Wirt means _her_ because maybe—just _maybe—_ he’s heard her all along, but they could never communicate. And if that is the case, what has he heard _her_ say? How often? Does he take as much joy, and heartbreak, in it as she does?

Beatrice can’t ask him, so she never finds out.

* * *

Wirt goes silent again. Summer cools into fall. Fall drops into winter. Before long, it is summer again, and fall again, and winter again.

Beatrice stops reading and rereading _Verse and Rhyme_. The few poems she wrote and saved find themselves torn up and thrown out, or burnt in the winter fire. Life, or whatever this is, moves forward. Beatrice, unfortunately, is caught up in the flow of it. Every day, sixteen. Every day, different but endless.

Once in a while, before she sleeps, she reads over the entries in her journals. She starts at the beginning, and reads as if it is a story all of its own. She laughs. She cries. Mostly cries, until she wakes up in the morning, with a damp pillow and the journals open on the space next to her.

The third journal takes the least amount of time. There are only thirty-something entries, hardly even three pages. Whenever Beatrice’s eyes reach the last entry, she chokes up and frowns.

At written phrase number nine hundred fifty-seven, _I think of her all the time_ is the last entry she ever wrote.

And the last one she heard.

 


End file.
